


Assless Chaps and Llamas

by 1lostone



Series: Lost's Rickyl Bingo Prompt Fills! [5]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: 1lostone is trying to be funny, 69 (Sex Position), Aliens Made Them Do It, Attempt at Humor, Come Marking, Crack, Fluff and Crack, I used to have shame, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other, Probably other filthy things as I think of them, Rickyl Writers' Group Bingo 2016, Sex Pollen, Tentacles, hahahahah., i blame jlm for everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-07 22:54:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11068779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1lostone/pseuds/1lostone
Summary: Rick and Daryl go on a totally normal and not weird whatsoever run  for supplies.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaroonCamaro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaroonCamaro/gifts).



> (Ahem. Once upon a time someone wrote [ a pornstar au with me in it. ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10023755)This is my revenge, in all its cracky glory.) 
> 
> ~~Sorry- not sorry~~.
> 
> PS. This is a WIP, with 4 chapters planned and 2 written. Most of it is unbeta'd although lotr58 was kind enough to give the first chapter a quick glance. Also I'm totally wirting this to fill out my bingo card from last year. It's not at all because I wanted to write sex pollen, amtdi, tentacle porn.
> 
> PPS. Heh. 
> 
> PPPS. Happy Birthday, Maroon! 
> 
> PPPPS. Tenty the Tentacle Monster ™ has been trademarked by yours truly. You can borrow him if you want, just link me back. :D

 

* * *

 

The run for supplies had been completely routine. That was the bitch of it all.

Michonne and Glenn had shooed them out of Alexandria with the not-so-gentle  reminder that people needed to eat, or people were gonna get really damn grouchy.  It wasn’t too bad yet-- and people were making do just fine, but Olivia had come to Rick privately about the fact that they were out of fresh butter, and she was worried.

Fresh butter.

 _Butter_ for fuck’s sake.

After the Wolves, and what had happened to Carl, Rick knew that the Alexandrians understood that reality was pretty damn dire. But sometimes... _sometimes_ someone would do or say something so surreal that Rick didn’t quite know what to do with it.

Of course they should have known something weird was gonna happen. The clouds were dark and ominous, the smell of ozone strong in the humid air as the whole world held its breath, waiting for the rain to fall. Lightning had lit up the sky, thunder had boomed, and all they really needed was Stephen King twirling an evil mustache for everything to be utterly fucked.

Then the rain had hit.

And hit.

And _hit._

Rick couldn’t recall ever seeing so much rain in one storm. It was like standing under a waterfall.

But he and Daryl were stubborn bastards, and people _were_ counting on them.

Routine was routine, even though he and Daryl hadn’t gone on a run together since before they found Alexandria, everything went just about as smoothly as Rick could hope for.  Find an unplundered ambulance? Check. Found a Baby Depot with a fuckton of unexpired formula? Checkity Check. Found a bunch of canned and preserved foods in someone’s basement? Checkity Check Check.  Daryl had been _unbearably_ smug about finding actual butter in some glass mason jars. They weren’t sure if it had gone off, but it smelled pretty good, and the seal  had been well-sealed by whoever had preserved it, so Daryl had actually whistled on the way back to the car.

Of course, that’s when the car had broken down.

Packed to the gills, tires spinning in the mud from the rain, it had been difficult to wrestle open the car door, but when they did, the goddamn thing-- overbalanced and stuck in neutral-- had slid down the hill willy-nilly, hitting a rock outcropping, and busting the hell out of the front end.

The horn blared as Rick and Daryl had looked at each other, both cursing a blue streak at their luck.  

Of course, that was when they noticed exactly where they were. Or, rather, they noticed the exact circumstances they were in.

The entire road had been washed out. There might have been an explosion of some kind or some other disaster that had caused the initial damage, but rain, or wear and tear, or hell, for all Rick knew it could have been aliens... but the overpass had washed out, and the river under it had flooded so much that it looked like a lake. Their car was at the bottom of this ravine, smooshed up against the rock face of the south end and just about up past its tires with running water.

“Well, shit.”

Rick stood with his hands on his hips and frowned down at his boots. The other end of the washed-out road where the overpass had been still had a small bit of the concrete sticking out, providing an overhang. He looked from it, to the water rushing and swirling around their poor, dead car crashed at the bottom, to Daryl.   The sudden rain had caused several washouts of mud. Rick was able to avoid them easily enough, but he made a mental note to be careful. He looked back at Daryl one last time.

“I _ain’t_ gonna leave that stuff.” Daryl glared. “We have potatoes, and I mean to have butter on ‘em.”

Rick sighed, and started pulling off his boots.  He knew better than to get between a man and his carbs.  Barefoot, he turned and walked the few feet to the overhang, and stuck his boots up as high as he could. Unless there was some kind of flood, they’d probably still be there when he got back. He started to pull off his t-shirt, and heard a small sound behind him. Rick turned, cautiously, but it was only Daryl, staring at him as though he had lost his mind.

“What? I’m gonna have to take off my jeans in case we need to swim. Ain’t gonna walk around in just a t-shirt.”

Daryl’s forehead wrinkled for a moment. He opened his mouth to ask a question, then must have realized what Rick was aiming at, because he actually turned a little red before nodding and turning around awkwardly.

Rick pulled off his clothes and shivered, the cold rain leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. Trying to keep his clothes dry at this point was pointless, but Rick put them up near his boots, wedging them in where everything should stay safe. It was a little weird being naked except for his machete and its holster (and boy was that gonna chafe like a bitch later) out in the middle of nowhere with only his friend as a witness, but Rick would be lying if he said that he wasn’t enjoying it just a little bit.  Not too much, because that rain was cold as fuck and he was pretty sure that his dick had hiked up to somewhere near his stomach in self-defense, but enough that Rick felt like a low-grade current was running just under his skin when he turned around and met Daryl’s gaze.

For some reason, Rick hadn’t expected Daryl to be wearing only his...

“Wo--ow.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Daryl flipped him the bird, looking like he was about to die of embarrassment.

Rick tried to bite the inside of his cheek, fighting like hell not to show any expression on his face.

“Um. Did your mother never tell you--”

“Rick Grimes you finish that sentence and I’ll kick your fuckin ass all the way home.”

Rick’s lips twitched. “Maybe. But you’ll be kicking my fucking ass in bright yellow smiley-face boxers and I kind of feel that takes away from the seriousness of the--”

A crack of thunder and flash of lightning illuminated the three walkers that had come to investigate the tasty humans that were stupidly making all the noise, and as he and Daryl whirled into action, Rick realized that other than the rain on the concrete, the sound of the two of them talking, and the thunder, there was no other noise.

As in, the horn that had been blaring was under water.

It didn’t take long to take out the walkers, and Rick felt no small amount of satisfaction at the fact that he managed to not get his swinging dick grabbed by one of them.

“Come on. Let’s get the stuff while we can.”

Rick frowned, sheathing his machete. He didn’t want to ask again if Daryl was sure, because yeah. He looked pretty damn sure that he wanted to get the supplies out of the car. The darkness of the storm just made it more interesting was all.

A little adventure in their otherwise boring lives.

A story to tell Abraham and Glenn over dinnertime.

 _Shit._ Rick sighed. No way was this going to end well. He knew that he should just put a stop to this, but he couldn’t say no to Daryl. Not after everything they’d been through together. Sighing again, Rick followed Daryl’s brightly patterned boxers towards the makeshift river.

“Okay, so I’ll go in first. Check it out. You watch and come help if I get in trouble.”   Daryl cleared his throat and made the universal ‘hey buddy, eyes are up here’ face.

Rick flushed again, nodding quickly. It wasn’t like he’d never _thought_ of Daryl like that before, but goddamn, that man’s ass was a thing of beauty in wet cotton. Even wet, day-glow yellow cotton.

“Ai-ite then.” Daryl’s lips twitched in his version of a smile. He turned and jumped into the water, swimming with broad, strong stokes towards where they’d crashed the car.  Rick watched as Daryl tread the water for a few minutes, waving when Daryl raised his hand in a thumbs up.

The thunder boomed ominously, and Rick looked around at his surroundings, feeling uncomfortable that he wasn’t right there to get Daryl’s back.

A low susurrus of sound caused Rick to turn his head so quickly that two of his vertebrae popped. Out of the corner of his eye Rick thought he saw a shape in the water, but staring at it hard yielded no results. He wiped the water out of his face impatiently, not even sure when the machete had appeared in his hand. It had just sort of materialized there.  

“You good?” Rick peered suspiciously at where he thought he had seen a shape, pitching his voice so that Daryl could hear him over the sound of the rain and thunder.

“Yeah. I’m gonna---oh _shit!_ Behind you! **_RICK!!_ ** ”

Rick heard the growl a split second before it attacked him, smelled the fetid, rotting breath moments before....

 

...

 

....

 

 

**(TBC!)**


	2. Chapter 2

Daryl couldn’t do anything to stop it.   

He was useless. Impotent. Helpless.

The lightning strobed so quickly that it hurt his eyes, highlighting the inevitable. He saw the walkers materialize out of nowhere, almost like a cheap plot device in a badly-paced   ~~fanfic~~  novel. He saw Rick’s face, the musculature of the body that had become so very dear to him in such a short amount of time. He saw the snapping, snarling jaws. He saw Rick try to turn.

He saw Rick go flying towards the water.

At first, Daryl thought that Rick had just jumped to get away from the walkers. Granted, it had been awhile since he’d had Ms. Moss’ seventh grade science class, but even with a lack of proper scientific background, Daryl knew that when someone jumped towards something they generally fell in the same direction that their body had been aimed.

They did _not_ flip in the air and move up so that they were dangling above the walkers’ heads like catnip dangling off a string above the head of a particularly playful cat.

Daryl reminded himself that gaping like a fish was probably not the best look for him, but still took a few seconds for him to actually move.

Rick’s screech of surprise cut off abruptly as he flew close enough to the walkers that they could have easily pulled him down had their manual dexterity hadn’t been so. . . dead.  

“Rick!”

Daryl started to swim towards his friend, but was stopped by _something_ in the water, swimming between the two of them like it knew what Daryl was doing.

Having grown up in Georgia, Daryl’s first thought was ‘gator!’ (well, okay so his first thought was ‘holy ** _FUCK_**!’ but his second thought was definitely ‘gator!’), but alligators didn’t move like that.

 _Nothing_ moved like that.

Daryl thought for only a split second before he tried to swim over the _thing_ that was blocking his path. Daryl had just a second to realize that Rick was now screaming Daryl’s name as he swung through the air, dangling by one ankle over the ground, then the water, then the ground again as the whatever-it-was flung him to and fro. Daryl flung himself forward, only realizing that he wasn’t actually moving when something slid around his waist. He’d been so distracted by Rick flying all over the place that Daryl hadn’t even noticed the thick appendage that had tightened around him, just over his hipbones.

Daryl yipped a startled squawk of sound and reacted on instinct, stabbing it has hard as he could.

This proved to be a very poorly-thought out idea.

The thing around his waist _tightened_ and Daryl was jerked underwater, before being flung towards what had been the middle of the river.

Rick’s terrified “FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKK!” ended in a splash and a gurgle of water.

Daryl was jerked under again, and he tried to swim to the top, but he only was able to breathe for a second. Daryl could have sworn he heard something else while he was underwater, but his sudden preoccupation with breathing kept him from paying as much attention as he should have.

He _really_ should have paid more attention.

If he had been paying attention, he would have seen that Rick was jerked under the water at the same time Daryl was. He would have seen Rick’s lips form Daryl’s name- and see him start to choke as the _thing_ kept him under water and unable to breathe.  

If he had been paying attention, he would have seen the surface of the water separate; currents forming out of nowhere to create a whirlpool. He would have seen what the _thing_ looked like.

His lungs burned, and his body trembled from where he fought to free himself. He felt too heavy and it was hard to see which direction to swim in-- for all he knew, he was swimming closer to the bed of the river than the surface.

The _thing_ flung him upwards, and Daryl sucked in oxygen while he could, trying to ignore the dizzy nauseous feeling in his gut. . . only to immediately lose any air he had when Rick was flung against him, his body slick and cold with water. Instinct had him clutching Rick’s shoulders, only peripherally realizing that Rick was holding him just as tightly.

Daryl a low rumble of sound, distorted through the high-pitched whine in his ears. He might have said something. He might have just screamed. But, when the _thing_ wrapped its long, scaly appendages around both him and Rick and tightened its grip he only had a split second to stare into Rick’s wide, terrified gaze before they were both jerked underwater again.

To his shock, there was no water. Daryl could _see_ the water swirling around them, a maelstrom that moved so quickly that it kept the very center of its vortex completely dry. He also could see the thing that held them, but in the split second before everything went dark, Daryl knew that he had to be seeing things.

 _Nothing_ real had that many tentacles.

***

“Daryl come _on_!”

The lips against his were chapped, and the sound of the voice cracking was almost like a physical blow. Daryl wrinkled his nose. His head was killing him, and Rick’s worried voice echoed strangely, as though they were at the bottom of a very long tunnel. Rick’s hand seemed warm against his shoulder, and it helped Daryl focus on... well, okay his head was really fucking killing him.

“Daryl!”

Daryl coughed, then couldn’t seem to stop. He felt Rick’s arm around his back, supporting him as he coughed and coughed, hacking up what felt like gallons of water.

“Where?”

Rick made a weird hiccuping sound- like a cross between a sob and laugh, and Daryl was glad for the faint light in the... wherever the fuck they were. Dealing with all this shit would be a helluva lot easier than to acknowledge the fact that Rick was painfully emotional over the fact that Daryl had almost just drowned.

Rick’s hand drifted over Daryl’s shoulder, down the musculature of his bicep and cupped his elbow before briskly moving back up, almost as though he was embarrassed as hell to be all touchy-feely but couldn’t seem to stop himself from doing it.

“Cave. I think. Something.... Dry. And there’s air.”

Daryl rolled his eyes, then immediately regretted it when his head protested. He was quiet for a moment, trying to pull his thoughts together.

“So... this is a bit weird, yeah?”  Rick forced a laugh.

Daryl stopped himself from rolling his eyes again, but only just.  “Weird? That’s one word for it.”

They didn’t talk for awhile while the silence grew more and more strained. Daryl wasn’t a particularly verbose guy, and strangely enough, ‘hey we’ve seemed to be kidnapped by a giant octopus and also I’m totally not staring at your dick’ just wasn’t something Daryl felt like he could just blurt out.  Of course, if he did, that would hardly be the weirdest thing he’d seen today, so there was that.

Rick huffed an irate breath and stood up, rubbing the palms of his hands over his thighs, completely at ease with his nakedness.

“It’s not too big- this cave. And I think there’s some kind of plant... thing that’s giving off light. Not much, but enough that at least it’s not pitch black." Daryl squinted up at where Rick was pointing and saw what looked like a tiny little piece of coral- like a bent over straw that was too big on the end. The curved open part was indeed glowing faintly.

“Hmm.”

Daryl rubbed his temples, and heaved himself up to his feet. “But you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Was just a little dizzy with all the-” he flung his hand around like miming a path of a roller coaster, and Daryl felt his stomach lurch remembering the flinging and dunking from before.

“Wish I could stay the same. I feel like a pillow that has had all the stuffing squeezed out of it.”

“Oh, well. I was thinking of that. I think. . . it’s ‘cause you. . . Stabbed it.”

Daryl blinked.

“You mean. . . it’s holding a _grudge_?”

Rick raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Not sure. But I wasn’t the one that almost...”

Daryl blinked again, and looked around the small space. The tiny phosphorous lights were almost pretty. It reminded Daryl of the stars in the night sky, now that all the cities were gone. He reached out to touch one, but Rick grabbed his hand before he could.

The feel of Rick’s hand against his was shocking enough that Daryl froze, want swirling through him like the eddies of water somewhere above them.

“I don’t think--”

Daryl jerked his hand out of Rick’s, cheeks flaming. But he moved too quickly, and the momentum of his hand flew against the cave’s wall, directly into several of the little coral-like plant things.

“--aw, _shit_.”

The sound was almost harmonic. A hum, then another, then several, then a cacophony of humming, until it was so loud that Daryl could feel the vibrations in his back teeth. With every hum, the light got more and more bright, spreading from the few that Daryl had touched with the back of his hand to others, then to others, causing a chain reaction of neon, phosphorous light to ricochet around the small cave until Daryl felt like he was in the middle of a black-light painting, squinting around him as the lights bathed both he and Rick in shades upon shades of neon color.

The humming was loud now, and almost uncomfortable, building to a crescendo that Daryl could feel in his bones.

When it stopped, Daryl shook his head twice, like a dog with water in its ears. The silence was deafening.

Rick’s grin in the weird light did funny things to Daryl’s heart. “Well. Huh. That wasn’t that ba--”

**_POOOF!_ **

A fine, incandescent dust exploded from all of the openings of the coral things at once, raining down on both Daryl and Rick in a flood of almost weightless powder.

“-ad.”

They looked like someone had glitter bombed the two of them, only the “glitter” had an almost oily feel. It was in their ears, and eyes, and Daryl could swear that it tasted weirdly like the scent of Rick’s shampoo. The powder slid against him everywhere. It wouldn’t brush off, but as soon as it touched their skin it started to glow more strongly than the weird coral things from before, until Rick and Daryl were the brightest things in the room.

“Well, shit. I don’t t think this day can get any weirder, man.”

Slow hissing filled the air, seemingly coming from the ceiling.

Daryl’s eyes widened as he recognized the same movement from before, in the water. It looked like the ... whatever it was... was back.  Daryl tried to answer Rick, but the powder was in his mouth now, coating his tongue. He had to clear his throat twice to be able to speak. “Rick? I really, _really_ wish you hadn’t said that.”

 

 . . .

 

. . .

 

**(TBC!)**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some additional tags. See the end notes for specifics, if you've somehow never come across tentacle porn.

 

Rick swallowed hard, staring up at the moving mass of. . .   _things_ on the ceiling. They cast weird shadows in the phosphorus light, and it was almost impossible to discern shadow from actual, moving. . .  thing.

 **_{[TENTACLES]}_** , his mind helpfully screamed.

As much as Rick shivered away from naming what he was seeing, _tentacles_ sure seemed like the correct noun, as far as grammar went. Three little syllables of ‘yep, that’s sure what I’m seeing all right’, but the tiny part of Rick’s mind that wasn’t screaming at him was a little concerned that ‘tentacles’ was too tame a word for what he was actually seeing. A tiny drop of sweat made its way down his forehead, dripping onto his collarbone.

“What. The. Fucking. _Fuck?_ ”

“So you’re seeing this too?” Rick ignored the fact that his voice was a little more high-pitched than normal. Actually, his voice sounded like Carl’s had before he hit puberty, but he didn’t think that Daryl was gonna call him on it.

“Am I.” Daryl made a sound that was meant to be a laugh, but sounded more like all of his internal organs collapsing at once. “Seeing. I see one-two-three-four-five. . .  shit I can’t count all of them. 60? 80? tentacles all writhing together? Like an octopus that leveled up. And, I haven’t dropped acid since Merle and I went to go see the Dead back in the 90s, so.”  He stopped in the middle of the sentence as though he’d forgotten how to speak.

Rick watched the tentacles writhe together for a minute, still in shock. He couldn’t see anything that reminded him of the sea creature- just a mass of squirmy, wavy, slightly glowing things.  Rick realized a little belatedly that the strawlike coral thingies on the walls weren’t there anymore, and had, in fact, been part of the creature in front of (around?) them.   


He nodded to himself, as though this explained everything.

“Hey Rick? I. . .  I don’t feel so hot. I mean, actually I do feel hot. Too hot. A little. Weird.” Daryl wiped his forehead, leaving a shimmery swathe of pink on his forehead. Rick turned to look sharply at Daryl, taking his attention off the ceiling for the first time since they’d been poofed with all the dust.

Rick reached out and put the back of his hand against Daryl’s forehead. . .

. . .  and froze.

Daryl’s eyes were. Rick hadn’t really ever been in the position to notice how many eyelashes the other man had, and now he found that he couldn’t look away. Daryl’s eyes were so. . .  blue. Almost the exact same color as some of the dust on his cheekbone in fact. The slight contrast amused Rick, and he smiled.

Rick watched the fingertips on his other hand come up slowly, as though they were attached to someone else. The pads of his fingers felt oddly soft as he lightly brushed them against Daryl’s cheekbone, over the small scar that he’d gotten there from an old fight with Merle.  He could feel Daryl’s hand stroke lightly on his shoulders and smiled a little, still unable to look away from Daryl’s gaze.

  
“Rick. . .”  

They were so close.

When had they gotten so close? If Rick just bent his neck a tiny bit, their lips would touch.

Rick felt the soft puff of Daryl’s breath against his mouth and licked his bottom lip nervously, knowing that there was a reason that something wasn’t quite right with him so close to Daryl, but unable to string his thoughts together to come up with what exactly that was.

The minutes seemed to stretch out for hours. They were so close that they shared breath. The heat that Daryl had mentioned must have been contagious, because Rick could feel it under his skin, tingling and making him over-aware of the beat of his heart, the thrum of his blood in his veins.

Finally, the tension seemed to snap.

Daryl made a low sound in the back of his throat, a sound that made every hair on Rick’s arms stand up at once. Rick couldn’t say that he knew what was going on, but he for damn sure knew that he wanted to hear Daryl make that exact same sound for whatever was left of his hopefully long and fruitful life.

Daryl kissed him hard, pressing his lips to Rick’s with another desperate sound, his tongue immediately tangling with Rick’s.

A sound, as disharmonious as the previous humming was harmonious, shocked Rick into breaking away from Daryl’s mouth.  He swallowed hard, all at once overly aware of what they’d been doing. He and Daryl had been kissing like horny, uncaring teenagers, licking into each other’s mouths as though they’d never stop.

The sound came again, and they both winced. Daryl brought both his hands up to cover his ears, and Rick frowned, confused because he could still feel Daryl’s hands on his shoul--

“Oh, _shit_.”

The tentacles yanked him up and backwards, so that Rick was looking down into Daryl’s shocked, upturned face.

Daryl shook his head hard, as though shaking off someone whispering something unpleasant, and scrambled forward.

Their fingertips  brushed briefly, before the thick, trunklike tentacles wrapped themselves around Rick’s biceps, waist and wrists, keeping him up in the air. Rick kicked at them, fighting, but that only caused more of them to wrap around his thighs and ankles, so that he was spread-eagled in the air, about twenty feet up from the cave’s surface.

Rick watched as Daryl was yanked back hard against the other side of the cave wall, two large tentacles slithering around Daryl’s throat and waist, keeping him in place.

“Fuckin’--- I’ll-- Daryl-- _NO!_ ”

Rick tried his best to move even a scant inch, to get to Daryl, but the tentacles kept him in place. His lips still tingled from their kiss, and the taste of Daryl’s mouth was heavy on his tongue. It mingled with-- or perhaps enhanced-- the heavy, oily dust that sat heavy on the back of his mouth.

Daryl gasped, his face turning horribly red. The gurgling sound he made made Rick freeze in place, and he was relieved to see that as soon as he stopped struggling, the tentacles stopped strangling Daryl.

Rick hung there, watching as Daryl took another breath, and another, staring up at him through his bangs as though horribly confused.

“I think... they like me.” Rick sounded almost embarrassed. 

Daryl muttered something under his breath that Rick didn’t quite catch.

“Can you- look for a way to get me out of this?”

“Rick. I’m not quite sure how to break this to you man, but we’re stuck at the bottom of a cave at the bottom of a river washout that shoulda been three feet deep, max. I’m tied up like a bad guy in a gangster movie and you’re spread out like a butterfly on a goddamn board like some sacrificial virgin.” Daryl huffed out a frustrated breath as the thick appendages keeping him in place moved, turning him so that he was no longer facing Rick. “We’re covered in glitter spooge and no one knows where we are. Not so sure how to get us out of this one, to be honest.”

“Glitter spooge?”  Rick grinned a half smile, trying to ignore that some of the smaller tentacles were slowly sliding up and down his calves. They were weirdly warm, and when it touched the ‘glitter spooge’ that he was still covered with, it made him shiver in a way that... wasn’t exactly unpleasant.

“Well, it’s shiny, glowy and feels sticky and slippery. What would you call it?”

Rick cocked his head to the side, nodding. “Nope. Glitter spooge just about covers it. So I don’t mean to alarm you or anything, but can you see what our friend is doing over here?”

The tentacles on his legs slid around his thighs, up over his balls, and over his hip and abs, curiously. Rick swallowed hard, telling himself that he was _not_ going to be turned on by some overgrown octopus.

Daryl tried to turn around to look, but the tentacles keeping him in place tightened again.

“No! NO, don’t move. It doesn’t like that. Just... it’s-- _ah_!-- fine.”

“Rick?”

Rick’s mouth opened as two of the smaller tentacles mapped out the length of his soft cock, wiggling and twisting from the tip to the base and up over his chest, under his armpit, and up his neck. The tingling heat from its touch followed them and Rick felt his dick start to harden. He was both horribly embarrassed and weirdly turned on. All Daryl would have to do is turn just a little bit, and he’d see--

“Rick!”

“Nuh-nothing. I’s... ohhh.” The curious little tentacles traced his lips, and nose, dusted over his eyelids and ears, before stroking down his back, a little harder than before. Rick’s heartbeat increased, he saw Daryl struggling again, and vaguely remembered that he was supposed to be doing... no. Saying. Saying something...

“Rick? Rick!”

Rick gasped as one of the tentacles slid over the globes of his ass, then curiously between them, sliding down and back over his balls. Rick struggled to open eyes that were heavier than they should be. He was too hot, but shivering. The tentacles made another pass over him and Rick bit his lip. Surely they weren’t gonna. . .?

Daryl still struggled, only now he was being held as a very obvious captive. Ropes of tentacles were around him from knee to shoulder, with a thick one around his throat. His friend had  been turned back so that he could see Rick, and Rick felt guilty that he was enjoying this so much when Daryl was obviously not. At his gasp, Daryl froze again- staring with wide eyes at the tentacles stroking Rick’s cock.

Rick’s face burned with humiliation, but when he knew that Daryl was watching, the curious little wiggles seemed more intense.  And Rick didn’t know if it was just the weirdness, or some crazy effect of the glitter spooge, but he _was_ enjoying it. When the tentacles spread him open, he opened his legs just that little bit wider, breath heaving. When a small one wiggled near his nipples, then over them, Rick arched his back. When another curiously traced the rim of his ass, and Daryl’s eyes widened even further, Rick moaned, shutting his eyes.

“Rick?”

“Mmm?”

“Are you...?”

“Oh _god._ You’re--not?”

Daryl didn’t answer and Rick forced open his eyes to look back. Daryl was staring at the cave floor, his face hidden by his hair.

One of the tentacles slid inside of him, inhumanly hot. Rick didn’t know why it didn’t hurt. Maybe it produced its own slick.

“Daryl...”

Daryl actually cringed.

“No. Daryl.. Look at me.”

The strain of speaking was almost too much. Rick didn’t recognize the gravelly tone of his voice. The tentacle in his ass increased in both temperature and size until Rick was gasping, but when it started to wiggle again, to slowly thrust in and out, to make room inside of him he moaned, unable to hold it back.

He didn’t moan ‘no’, or ‘help’, or ‘god, yes, more.’

He moaned Daryl’s name.

When Daryl looked up at him, it wasn’t the look Rick was expecting. He’d thought that Daryl would be as into this as Rick was, that his face would look like it did when they had stopped kissing. . . pupils blown, sweat beading his upper lip, eyes half-open with passion.

Daryl’s expression was not like that _at all._

Daryl was absolutely. Fucking. _Furious._

Rick watched it like it was happening in a movie. Every nerve in his body was singing, straining towards coming. It was hard to concentrate, especially when one of the other tentacles near his face belched out another poof of incandescent glitter spooge. Rick grunted, and tried tentatively to move away from the tentacles that kept him captive, but they just increased their vigor.

But with all of that, the look on Daryl’s face, kept him from tumbling over that edge.

Rick couldn’t have said how long it went on. It didn’t help that one of the smallest tentacles had tightened around the base of his cock, ensuring that he wouldn’t go off like a geyser. He knew that he cried out, but couldn’t have sworn to what he said. He knew he was sweaty and his skin was tingling, almost burning with sensation, but he still couldn’t reach either of the two things he wanted so badly- to come, or to touch Daryl.  

The tentacles had turned him over, they were in his mouth, pulling on his balls and his nipples, tight around his cock, in his ass and weirdly over his toes which Rick was not down with at _all_ , when he felt it.

A hand. A very, very _human_ hand, in the center of his back, flexing against the sweaty, trembling muscle there.

Daryl.

Rick shuddered, straining towards him. He reached out his hand, almost blinded by now, buried in the mass of wiggling, writhing tentacles. Daryl’s fingers entwined with his and he yanked, sending Rick spinning towards him. Rick clutched Daryl’s fingers as though they were a lifeline, desperately clinging to him with everything he could.

The mass of tentacles fought him, keeping Daryl from him as much as it could.  Rick had lost the plot somewhere, and didn’t know how Daryl had managed to get this close, but he heard himself almost sobbing when Daryl gently used the hand on his back to guide him closer. They were still suspended above the ground, but Rick was almost perpendicular to Daryl, so that their heads were together.  Daryl bent his neck and whispered near Rick’s ear.

“Rick. You look at me.” The humming from before started again, and it was just weird enough that Rick tried to ignore it.

“I can’t. I. . . I _can’t.”_

‘Rick. Come on now. I can get us out of this, but I need you.”

Rick shuddered and sobbed, lightheaded with a lack of oxygen. He heard Daryl’s low voice in his ear, and even _that_ increased his painfully desperate need to come. He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten how much he wanted Daryl. A fleeting memory reminded him of their kiss from before.

“Oh. _Oh! Uhhhhn._ Oh. O-O-Okay.”

‘Good, Rick. That’s good. Now you need to listen, all right? You need to hear me, because I’m only gonna say this once.”  Daryl’s voice was impossible not to mind. Rick turned his face towards Daryl, fighting to open his eyes. When he did, it was impossible to look away.

“You want to come, huh? Need to, by the look of it. Desperate for it, want it more’n anything.”

Rick wasn’t sure what type of sound he made in answer, but Daryl nodded like it made sense. The humming was so loud now that Rick could feel its vibrations in his muscles, throbbing a counterpoint to his heartbeat.

“You can’t though. So close. . .”

“D’r’l,” Rick slurred, helpless.

Daryl’s fingers tightened painfully on Rick’s. It was a shock; a different sensation that caused Rick’s eyes to widen.

“But you can’t.” Daryl’s voice was a low hiss, his eyes barely open as he stared back. “You can’t come because you. Are. **MINE**.”

His?

His. _His_. _His_. _ **His**_.

The humming stopped abruptly. Rick’s ears popped with the lack of sound, but he was so close, so fucking desperate for _something_ that he just lay there passively in the tentacles that held him captive. Daryl’s lips crashed down on his again and Rick _screamed_ , shuddering.  his cock spurting all over the tentacles that surrounded it.

In a flash, the writhing mass of squirmy tentacles moved, almost jerking away from him. It left him empty and tingling, his hole twitching around a sudden emptiness. Rick was still shuddering from the intensity of finally coming, and he barely realized that Daryl yanked their bodies together, keeping him from faceplanting on the cave’s floor.

“Rick? Shit! Don’t you dare pass out on me!”

Rick heard Daryl, heard how frantic he sounded and really wanted to listen. He did. Honestly. But...

“ _RICK_? **_RI_** \--!””

 

 . . .

 

. . .

 

 **TBC**!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definite dub-con elements. Also, Rick kind of has a humiliation kink. Oh don't look at me like that. It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to him!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and here... a little late... is the thrilling conclusion!

 

  

Daryl knew that for years after this point, he’d have a new definition of ‘weird.’ 

Like, okay, figuring out that he liked dicks? That was a pretty weird moment in his life. Not the dick part, but the circumstances- he figured this out when he was at the lake fishing with William Jensinki and they went from playing beer pong to blowing each other, and he remembered it pretty vividly. He was lying there in the bottom of the boat with Billy’s cock halfway down his throat, and Daryl’d thought, ‘Boy, this is weird.’

Then of course there was the fact that their lives had turned into one big ‘We’re Not Dead Yet!’ Monty Python skit, only with more blood and and pants-shittingly scary, afraid-for-my-life-and-the-lives-of-those-I-love terror, and less John Cleese and Eric Idle. 

But this?

Nobody was ever gonna fuckin’ believe  _ this _ shit. 

Daryl ate the last cheeto in the bag and balled it up, tossing it into the backseat of the car. 

Hell, once Rick woke up, (and Daryl knew that Rick Would. Wake. Up.) Daryl didn’t even know how he was going to explain all this. 

The truth? Fuck that.  _ Daryl _ didn’t even believe the truth, and he’d lived it!  Ignore everything and go back to the way they’d been? Sure. That had possibilities, but Daryl didn't think that he could go from shouting that Rick was his, to seeing the man come so hard he’d literally blacked out, to back to the status quo without a few mental hiccups. 

The truth, in this case, was truly stranger than fiction. The tentacle monster, (Daryl had dubbed him Tenty in his head, although he’d never confess this under torture.) had not liked Daryl very much in the water, but it had  _ really _ not liked when after it had. . . done to Rick what it had done to Rick (and Daryl still felt his blood pressure rise, disgusted with himself for not saving Rick from that whole thing somehow.), and Daryl had started sawing off the thick trunk-like tentacles after Rick had collapsed, senseless. It had bled, but more importantly, it had  _ screamed _ . 

  
The thing had moved more quickly than anything Daryl had ever seen in his life. The twitching, bleeding tentacles were knocked to the side as it sort of collapsed in on itself. He and Rick hadn’t been able to see it before, but the entrance to the cave had been there the whole time. Tenty had just blocked it with the huge mass of its body.  

Whatever had happened before must have. . .. well. Maybe it. See, the thing was. . .  

“Goddammit.”  

Absently, with the hand that wasn’t covered in Cheetos cheese, he stroked Rick’s hair back from his forehead, ignoring his ridiculous underwear for the much more important fact that Rick Grimes’ head was pillowed high on his thigh, with his face turned towards Daryl’s crotch. Daryl’s fingers drifted over Rick’s pulse one more time, checking his pulse, and taking comfort in the small breaths that proved he was alive. Daryl glared down at his feet, staring blindly at the bit of chartreuse on his toe.  

That was the other thing. The glittery, dusty stuff, once it had hit the water (and once Tenty had booked it for god knew where, the water had spilled into the little cave until the two of them were crammed up on a small plateau in the back right, near where Rick had been held captive) had turned almost viscous. It reminded Daryl of Vaseline in consistency, but when he stared at it on his fingers, it was almost as though he could see entire galaxies swirling in the slippery depths. There’d been so much on him that Daryl had been able to scrape it into a fairly large pile of goo. He put it to the side of where they lay, and could have sworn it twinkled malevolently at him. 

Daryl stared morosely at the car. 

Yes,  _ that _ fuckin’ car. 

The car that he’d been so fuckin’  _ smug _ over fillin’ up.

The car that he’d insisted Rick empty out.

The car that was the reason they’d even gotten into this mess. 

Daryl sighed.  

“Mm.”

Daryl froze with his hand tangled in Rick’s curly hair, still wet from their impromptu swim and . . . other things. 

“Rick?” Daryl’s whisper was barely discernible over the sound of the still thrumming rain. 

“Jesus Christ. I’m blind!” Rick twitched from where he lay on Daryl’s lap, turning to and fro.

“ _ What _ ?!” Daryl bent over and cupped Rick’s face, staring down into his wildly-blinking eyes.  Rick brought his hands up and rubbed his eyes, eyelashes still spiky with the incandescent sparkly dust. 

“Close up of those shorts, man. Pretty sure they radiated my irises.”

Daryl’s mouth dropped open. 

“Oh. . . you  _ fucker. _ ”

Rick actually grinned up at him, pushing himself up to his knees, so that he was straddling Daryl’s legs.  He sat back on his heels and pushed his hair back with both hands. 

Daryl’s eyes narrowed. “You look surprisingly chipper for someone just fucked by a giant octopus.”  He winced, inwardly. Daryl had never been jealous before. Being jealous of said giant octopus wasn’t exactly one of his greatest moments. 

Rick shrugged. “What can I say? Haven’t had anything but m’hand in way too goddamn long. Some of it was. . . weird.” He glanced down. “More than weird. Don’t get me wrong. But some of it was. . . good.” 

Daryl swallowed hard. “We only. I mean, that only happened because of the. . .” He trailed off, but rubbed some of the blue-pink-silver stuff between his fingers. “Stuff. Whatever this was.” 

Rick looked around, noting that the car blocked the cave entrance.  “Looks like we can just crawl through the backseat to get out.” He stared for a moment at the washed-out overpass where he’d stored his clothes and boots for several seconds. The water had spilled into the cave, and Daryl startled when Rick jumped off the little outcropping and into the water, rubbing the water over his naked body. Daryl stared with his mouth open a little before it hit him that Rick was washing off the incandescent residue. 

“It makes sense that you’d want that off,” Daryl nodded, trying to be philosophical about it. 

“Nah. Not really.” 

Daryl’s forehead crinkled with confusion.  “Then why are you--”

“So I can--” Rick shook himself off, like a dog. He hopped back up onto the stone outcropping. “-- do this without you questioning my motives.” 

Daryl made a soft little  _ oomph _ sound as he found himself with a lapful of Rick Grimes. Rick’s mouth was so hot as he kissed him, and the water from the washout kept Rick’s skin cool and slick against his. 

Rick pulled back and stared at him, searching Daryl’s eyes with his own steady gaze. “Yeah?”

Daryl shivered at the low thrum of want in Rick’s voice. He nodded, still a little dazed and leaned forward to meet Rick’s lips with his. 

It was like a switch being flipped. 

“Yeah,” Daryl breathed, kissing him back. The fact that Rick wanted him,  _ still wanted him _ after everything hit him like a low-grade current. He couldn’t unsee how Rick had looked being fucked by those tentacles, and while Daryl couldn’t exactly put his finger on the moment when his life had turned into a low-budget anime, he couldn’t exactly deny that the image of Rick’s stretched ass being breached by the thick one, or the way that Rick had twitched each time the smaller tentacles had tweaked his nipples, shivers running visibly over his over-sensitized body wasn’t hot as hell. 

“C’mere.” Daryl yanked Rick to him onto the little stone ledge, and followed Rick to his back as he licked into Rick’s mouth, tugging a little at Rick’s bottom lip with his teeth. 

The sound Rick made Daryl’s cock twitch behind the uncomfortably cold and wet boxes. 

Rick’s moan was echoed by the much-less-sexy sound of a walker banging at the car’s panel. Daryl looked up, and Rick tilted his head back to be able to see. Safety was always their main concern, but...

“Just one. Car’s wedged in well enough.”

Daryl nodded and stared down at Rick’s exposed neck. He started kissing Rick again, willing enough to ignore the walker that couldn’t get to them. Daryl brushed this top teeth over Rick’s pulse point, and his Adam’s apple, down the center of Rick’s slightly-cold body. 

Daryl eased them onto their side, rubbing up and down the expanse of Rick’s skin, warming him up and feasting on the feel of having all that skin available to touch.  Daryl eased down Rick’s sternum, licking at Rick’s belly button. Daryl reached towards Rick’s half-hard dick, wrapping his slightly shaking fingers around Rick for the first time. 

“Wait.I want you too.  Turn around, flip so I can. . .” 

Daryl nodded and turned around, twisting his body into a 69 position.  This wasn’t always Daryl’s favorite way to do things, but for awhile, it would be okay to have Rick--

“ _ Fuck!” _

Rick’s hot mouth seemed inhumanly heated as he pressed his open mouth against the wet boxers and the trapped shaft of Daryl’s cock. Rick sucked him through the fabric and Daryl grunted, flipping over onto his back and shimmying out of the stupid birthday gift from Carol, sending them flying into the water with a wet  _ splat. _

Daryl bit his lip at Rick’s low laugh, and then his mouth was on him again and Daryl shuddered, lost in the sensation of several years of fantasies coming to life. 

Rick’s cock in front of him had thickened, but was not fully hard yet. Daryl leaned forward and guided him into his mouth, enjoying the soft feel of Rick on his tongue, before he began to suck lightly.  Rick had come so hard before that Daryl knew that he had to still be sensitive, and the musky taste of Rick’s come  made him slightly desperate for more. Rick’s cock got hard quickly, blood-hot and so thick that Daryl had to move his mouth back so that he wouldn’t choke.  Daryl could feel Rick’s mouth bobbing up and down, could hear Rick’s muffled moaning as he echoed each movement with his own mouth, until Daryl could feel the muscles in his lower abdomen tighten as a precursor to coming. 

Daryl pulled off of Rick with a muffled pop and a line of precome connecting his mouth to the red, spongy head of Rick’s cock. 

He wiggled back into his original place, then pulled Rick up to his feet. Rick staggered a little, but used the momentum to push Daryl into one of the stone walls, cupping his face and kissing him again, their lips and tongues working. Daryl lost himself in the kiss. 

When they broke apart to breathe,  Daryl licked at his tingling lower lip, staring at Rick with a slight grin. Rick’s returning smile was a tad bit goofy, and it struck him then that they were actually here, despite all the weird shit, not just  _ because _ of all the weird shit. Daryl brushed Rick’s lips with his very softly.

“Not for nothin’, but how do you want to do this? I don’t much care. You in me, me in you, it don’t much matter to me.” Daryl cocked his head, watching the flush on Rick’s face and feeling fiercely proud of himself for putting it there. 

“You don’t care?” 

Daryl started to shrug, but Rick continued talking. “You said I was yours, and you don’t want to fuck me?” 

Daryl’s mouth went dry. 

“You don’t want to make me forget what it felt like to have that. . .  _ thing _ inside me?” 

Daryl flipped their positions so quickly that Rick had to slap his palms up to the rock to keep his head from hitting its surface. He kicked apart Rick’s legs and knelt down. Rick tilted his ass, pushing it out towards Daryl’s face. 

Daryl grabbed the two globes of Rick’s ass and spread Rick open, staring hard at the puffy, slightly stretched, reddened pucker of Rick’s hole. Some of whatever slick the tentacles had produced leaked in small trickles down Rick’s asscrack and over his balls, catching some of the glitttery dust in its depths. He looked as though he’d been fucked, and fucked hard, and the fact that it wasn’t Daryl who had fucked him made something dark in his gut surface. 

He wasn’t gentle when he bent forward, licking at the mess in front of him. 

Rick shouted, the sound echoing through the small cave as Daryl fucked him with his tongue, spreading his rim with the tips of his thumbs so that he could clean him up. At least that was his intention. Later, Daryl would realize that there had to have been some kind of weird reaction when his tongue had touched the slick, because he had  _ never _ rimmed someone so thoroughly. It wasn’t until he pulled back for a breath and realized that Rick was a trembling, shaking mess in front of him that Daryl could make himself stop. 

Daryl wiped his wet mouth with the back of his hand before looking around the small cave.  The walker had apparently found something else to do, because it was nowhere to be found.  Daryl caught sight of the small pile of viscous glittery stuff he’d scooped to the side and before he could remember why using it might not be the best idea, he’d grabbed a handful and started stripping his dick with it, eyes almost rolling back in his head as the stuff reacted with the precome on his cock. He felt it again, the desperate, feeling of  _ now _ ; of having a low-grade current right under his skin. 

He used two fingers to check that Rick was open enough, moaning at the incredible heat inside before tugging Rick where he wanted him and positioning the head of his cock at Rick’s opening. 

Daryl realized that Rick was panting for breath, each inhale a strained repetition of Daryl’s name, and bared his teeth in a grin as he slowly fucked into Rick Grimes for the first time.  He gave them a second, a half of a heartbeat before Rick slapped his hip and Daryl finally started fucking Rick like he’d wanted to do for so long, slamming the rest of the way inside with a filthy twist of his hips. 

His balls slapped against Rick’s with every thrust. Daryl folded his body around Rick’s reaching down and around to jerk off Rick, trying to match the rhythm of his fucking, with the thumb of his finger sliding over the head of Rick’s cock on every upstroke. 

He had to use his other hand to brace them against the wall. Rick’s moans changed in pitch, and Daryl’s hand tightened on the base of Rick’s cock, keeping the other man from coming as he thrust inside of Rick with a shout, one last time, feeling his balls empty as his cock jumped and shuddered in the impossibly hot, tight space it had made for itself inside of Rick’s body. He let go of Rick’s cock, moving Rick’s hand to where his had been. 

“Don’t you dare come yet.” Daryl knew his voice sounded jealous and wrecked, but the meek way Rick nodded and held his own cock from coming soothed some of the darkness he’d felt. 

He had barely started to come down when he jerked his cock out and fell back to his knees, pulling Rick’s asscheeks apart  and watching his come leak out of the reddened, twitching rim. 

“Wh-what are you...oh. Oh fuck, Daryl,  _ fuck _ !” 

He had meant it when he called Rick **_his_**. 

Daryl licked at the trickle of come, pushing the bulk of it back inside with three fingers, twisted so that his thumb could get at Rick’s perineum.  He slapped at Rick’s ass with the other hand and Rick grunted, shivering. 

“Make it tight.”  Daryl slapped him again, and Rick complied, tightening around his three fingers. He changed positions slightly, reaching out for the last bit of glitter spooge, batting Rick’s hand off his own cock and slowly jacking him off with it. 

Daryl just let his fingers stay there until Rick’s breaths were tight, then pressed onto Rick’s prostate with his finger and his perineum with his thumb. 

Rick  _ wailed _ and collapsed onto his knees, unable to do much more than take it as Daryl fucked him with his fingers, feeling the slick, sloppy mess he’d made inside. 

Rick’s whole body tensed and Daryl pulled away so that he could flip Rick over onto his back. Rick’s limbs were useless, flopping around almost helplessly as Daryl arranged him how he wanted him. Rick’s face was sweaty, and his hair was insane, and he stared at Daryl like he’d never seen him before.  

Daryl pushed and prodded until he was in the water and Rick was spread out before him, his cock fully hard and dripping before fingering Rick’s asshole again, teasing his fingers around the rim. Maybe next time he’d see what exactly Rick could take, but right now he wanted Rick’s cock down his throat. 

The long, lean line of Rick's body arched and Daryl only got two long sucks before Rick was coming, juddering and babbling as thick jets of come hit the back of Daryl’s throat.  Daryl gave himself a second to breathe before he made a face and ducked under the water, spitting and rinsing out his mouth with a grimace. Weird tentacle monsters and glowing, sex-inducing glittery dust aside, the taste of come still didn’t taste like chocolate. 

Daryl came back up to see that Rick had pushed himself on his elbows and was staring down at him with a dazed look on his face. Daryl tugged on his ankle and Rick jumped down into the water with him, both of them leaning against the other as they washed off in the cool water. Daryl could hear rain dripping, and the rumble of thunder off in the distance over the sound of his slowly thudding heartbeat.

“Now what?” Daryl whispered, more to break the silence then because he was really interested in what would be their next step. 

Rick’s voice was scratchy when he answered, and Daryl tried not to feel too smug that the two of them  _ had _ made rather a lot of noise given the events of the past few hours. “We take a fuckin’ nap. After that, we dig out the supplies and start making our way home. We forget about this, if that’s what you want.” Rick shrugged with one shoulder, although the way he tightened his grip around him let Daryl know what he thought about that. 

Daryl nodded, pulling away to kiss Rick softly. Rick sighed into the kiss and Daryl knew that no matter what, things would be okay. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Epilogue

Some time later, when the car had been rusted into nothingness, and thick mud of the washout had long turned to dust, there was movement under the burning sun. 

Of course, no one was around at this particular moment to notice. Rick and Daryl were off enjoying their gloriously kinky happily ever after, because after a start like that, who could blame them? They’d been elected as part of Alexandria’s ruling counsel, and they worked seamlessly as a team: lovers and best friends and beloved. Of course, the Alexandrians were pretty happy with the decisions they made. Daryl liked to joke that it was because his butter had brought all the boys to the yard, but Rick knew that it was their evenhanded, steady guidance that had turned the ASZ into a strong community. 

Mostly. 

(The butter had probably helped though.)

((People do all sorts of mad things for  freshly-churned butter.))

The walkers had mostly rotted into stinking piles of walker goo, and while there was no vaccine to cure the dead into not turning into. . . er. . .  the dead, the fact that they had mostly gone away made life a lot easier. 

Well. 

Sort of.

See the thing about happy endings is that sometimes you focus so much on your happiness that you sort of forget the crazy events that got you there. As much as they had earned their eventual happy ever after, our two boys  _ really _ should have remembered. 

So it’s perhaps understandable that no one. . . well, no one  _ human  _ anyway, saw the resolution to our fun little tale of hopeless pining, tentacles, and glittery spooge. 

If you had come across that washed out bit of highway on a sunny day, you probably would have walked on by. Nothing to see here. Nothing whatsoever. 

But.

If you had come across that washed out bit of highway on a  _ rainy _ day. . . nay. A day where there was a sudden torrential downpour. . . a day where the thunder and the lightning seemed to sort of leave the strong stench of burnt ozone in the air, you might have noticed something in the corner of what had once been a small cave. You might have realized that the rotted, ancient fabric, although now bleached by the sun, had once been bright yellow. If you squint you might have seen happy faces on them. You  _ might _ have noticed that they almost had an. . . incandescent shimmy to them, a shine not of this world. 

And. . . perhaps. . . if you were very, very diligent, you would have noticed the faintly pink tentacle, no bigger then a pinkie finger, wiggling out of what had once been the waistband.

 

. . . 

. . . 

 

Maybe. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp.
> 
> There you go.
> 
> Happy birthday, Maroon. :D Thanks for being friends with such a weirdo.
> 
> Thanks to jlm as always for listening to my ideas. This fic is mostly unbetad because my beta is insanely busy, so any goofs are all mine. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
